Relying On Staff Support

UCONN BASKETBALL

Back when Ray Allen and Doron Sheffer were at UConn, the coaches used to joke that they were stealing money because they felt the team could have coached itself.

But teams and seasons change.

There are times when the coaches need to coach more, be more demonstrative. Right now, this is one of those teams that needs it, and it is having one of those seasons.

We've said a thousand times that this team is young. But in the past week or so, it has gone through too many emotional twists and turns to rise above them all by itself.

They were punked by Boston College at home and had their offensive confidence nearly shattered at Virginia Tech.

The Huskies, reeling a bit from back-to-back losses, went to Providence Saturday looking to pick themselves up off the canvas. They did it with the UConn coaching staff in their corner, lending its energy, input and support on every possession.

As a result, the Huskies dunked Providence 84-68 at the Dunkin' Donuts Center.

The Huskies need to play with the confidence and swagger they showed in back-to-back wins over Villanova and St. John's. Until they have shown they have recovered from losing their coach and their point guard, and clearly understand that they have to play to their strengths, they'll need continued support from interim coach George Blaney and assistants Tom Moore, Clyde Vaughan and Andre LaFleur, especially tonight against Syracuse at the Civic Center.

``I think it's going to be a day-by-day thing,'' Moore said. ``We really can't determine it. Every team has to be handled differently.''

This young team has proved to be inconsistent. A lot of players are playing, and roles continue to change.

``But if we win [today] and then we go on the road and beat Villanova [Saturday], maybe we develop that confidence that last year's team developed around this time, then we can probably let off a little bit,'' Moore said.

``It just looked like going into [Saturday's] game, they needed as much help as anyone could provide them during the course of battle. But again, we may sort of right ourselves and be able to get up on our own two feet and feel good about ourselves and [the coaches'] role again will slowly change. But I would anticipate for [tonight], we'll try to stay the way we were Saturday until we as a staff feel like, `Yeah, we got it back,' and they think they're pretty good and they're poised and they're comfortable and they're together and things like that.''

The Top Dog, Jim Calhoun, is recovering from surgery for prostate cancer and point guard Taliek Brown is out a month with a broken left index finger. With the threat of a serious slide coming, the Huskies' swagger and confidence had to be restored. And since there is no Caron Butler-like leader on the team, the only way for that to happen was for the coaches to fill the void.

Blaney got the staff together before the Providence game and told them they needed to be more energetic. They were. They had to do more coaching. They did. And the team responded in a hostile environment.

The Huskies' strengths are quickness, shooting and toughness -- when they don't give in like they did against BC.

They showed all three strengths against PC.

``During the game,'' Vaughan said, ``everything we were telling them to do offensively -- I mean everything -- they were doing it. And everything defensively we were telling them, they did, too.''

That's not all that needed to be addressed. The personnel changes had to be dealt with, too. With Brown out, Ben Gordon and Tony Robertson -- both shooting guards -- had to share both guard duties. The coaches had to make the players feel comfortable with that. Freshman Marcus White was suddenly emerging as a dependable power forward. He needed to be nurtured and taught because he hadn't played that much before pulling down 11 boards against Virginia Tech.

Coming off the Boston College debacle, the coaches were not happy with the team's lackluster effort. Then came the alarming news about Calhoun. The Huskies went to Blacksburg hoping to win one for the coach. And when they didn't get it going early on offense, they fell out of sync and into a 23-point hole. They lost by 21.

So in two games they went from a team that needed a good tongue-lashing to one that needed some reassurance after the loss to Tech.

``I think we all agreed that one thing was important: We let the guys know how good they were,'' LaFleur said. ``We had a couple of bad losses, you know, you could highlight the losses and the bad plays. But we were doing some good things, too. It was important for us to stay together and we had to stay connected with the guys, probably a little bit more because they were a little bit fragile, going through a lot of things.''

The impressive thing about this young team is that it showed it can rebound from adverse situations quickly.

Now, it has to show it can hold its ground. If this very good coaching staff performs the way it did Saturday, the team will follow.